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Peek-a-boo, I See You: Watching Japanese Hard-core Animation

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Abstract

This essay proposes a phenomenological approach to the viewing of Japanese hard-core animation (widely known in the West as “hentai”), a type of erotica frequently characterized by detailed, unusual and fantastic depictions of sexual activity habitually intended for sexual arousal. Pertinent instances of Japanese traditions of erotica and visual representation, as well as Japanese animation and its industry are briefly reviewed. The main theoretical focus is on the experience of viewing such animated material and is mostly informed by Western notions of pornography and film viewing, particularly Vivian Sobchack’s work on the phenomenology of film.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper, I use the terms “pornography” and “pornographic” in a limited sense: that which depicts (either literally or metonymically) sexual acts nominally deemed private and is specifically marketed as an aid in the process of sexual arousal. Censure in Japan operates differently than in the Euro-American West (see, for example, Allison 1996, especially Chapters 3 and 7; Buckley 1991), and the country’s specific social and legal history is beyond the scope of this paper (in this particular, Perper and Cornog 2002, provide a general, historical framework that traces the sources of erotic depictions in manga, or Japanese comics, and is equally applicable to erotic anime). Also, when addressing the particularities of pornographic material, I will circumscribe myself to the categories of “soft-core” and “hard-core” as generally understood in contemporary North America: mainly, sexual suggestiveness and nudity for the first, explicit forms of intercourse and graphic fetishistic sexual activity for the second.

  2. Note that the Japanese connotations of the term hentai are substantially different from those the term has in the West. Unless otherwise indicated, I do not use the term in its Japanese context (e.g., perverse, extreme, abnormal) but as a broad Western nominative applied to material that falls within the definition of “hard-core” as commonly understood in North America: the depiction of explicit forms of sexual activity, including different types of intercourse. For a more in-depth analysis of hentai’s origins and connotations within the Western and, more specifically, Japanese contexts, see McLelland (2006); for more on hentai’s reception in North America, see Patten (2004).

  3. For more on the labeling, distribution and reception of hentai in the North American market, see Patten (2004).

  4. As Miyao (2002) points out, the “nature” of anime is a slippery concept that feeds on a variety of past and present discourses that have shaped Japanese attitudes towards the cinematic and animated images. Here, I am merely presenting a broad, introductory notion of what characterizes anime vis-à-vis Western popular animation.

  5. E.g., Jan Svankmajer, the Brothers Quay, Sylvain Chomet, Peter Chung.

  6. For more on the otaku, see Bolton (2005, pp. 66–76); Gardner (2003); Grassmuck (2000); and Lamarre (2004). Like hentai, the term otaku carries pejorative connotations in Japan and is roughly equivalent to the English term “geek.” It is not specifically associated with anime, but denotes a “being that monomaniacally pursues a sphere of interest” (Grassmuck 2000). Despite the negative Japanese connotations, anime fans in North America proudly use the term as a marker.

  7. By now there is plenty of evidence that anime fandom has a very large female component, both in Japan and abroad. Hentai, however, is still apparently most successful among males, particularly in the West, as attested by a plethora of Western hentai websites.

  8. I do not use the term “gaze” within the context of gaze theory, which posits a monolithic, distanced and phallicized objectifying view. I am referring to the act of watching within a preponderantly phenomenological context removed from specifically gendered facets—at least insofar as this is arguably possible in the case of pornographic material.

  9. According to Bolton, some anime horror features “encourage the viewer to ask what it means to fantasise, and to see the ways in which he or she is manipulated by the medium itself,” creating an “eye that does not watch the screen, but instead allows the spectator to watch him or herself watching” (2005, p. 68).

  10. Writes Sobchack: “[…] insofar as I cannot literally touch, smell, taste the figure on the screen that solicits my sensual desire, my body’s intentional arc will reverse its direction to find reciprocity in an accessible, realizable literal object: my own lived-body. Thus, on the rebound—and without a reflective thought—I will reflexively touch myself touching, smell myself smelling, taste myself tasting, and, in sum, feel my own sensuality” (quoted in Williams 1999, p. 291).

  11. Interestingly, a substantial portion of the sex scenes in Urotsukudoji are “layered” in this way: an animated character acts as voyeur and the audience gets to watch from their point of view, as well as the camera’s privileged one and the participant’s restricted one. Although this is a very common feature in hentai, Urotsukudoji manipulates it for predominantly aesthetic (rather than emphatically stimulating) purposes. As well as inordinately violent, the series is generally aesthetically and artistically more complex than a lot of hard-core animation and could be viewed as an exposition of sexual anxieties. See Pointon (1997).

  12. For more on erotic subgenres such as yaoi (depictions of male homosexuality geared toward a mostly female audience), which subvert or play with socially established gender categories by providing the spectator with differently sexed, virtual, vicarious, and fluid personas, see Shigematsu (1999), Perper and Cornog (2002), and Buckley (1991).

  13. For an extensive discussion on the subject of the anime body’s artificiality and its similarity to the Japanese puppet, see Bolton (2002).

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Christopher Bolton and María Talamantes, who provided most helpful assistance during the early and final stages of this manuscript.

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    Mariana Ortega-Brena

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Ortega-Brena, M. Peek-a-boo, I See You: Watching Japanese Hard-core Animation. Sexuality & Culture 13, 17–31 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-008-9039-5

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